Writing Fiction by Installment

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Dead House Blues – A Poem

I think we realize the desert.
The open drunkenness of its air
fills our blood.

Dead house blues.

I collected the photographs from the walls
in compensation for missed memories.
It is a collaborative psychosis.
I submit.

She crosses her legs and pulls up her stockings.
The hot syrup that was poured over my French toast
has run into my eggs.
It is an uncomfortable situation.
She refuses to add anything other than
blueberries to her yogurt.
Her coffee has turned cold.

She strikes a match
in answer to the late evening melancholy.
Outside
the rotting smell of cantaloupe clings sweet
and suffocating while
the buildings turn a yellow-red under the street lights.
Illusions vanish as Saint Martin Road transforms.
A paper mountain landscape leaving us
only anxious for winter.

Dead house city blues.

It is not so much a lie I conceal
as it is an omission.

Pandering in the dark
we make an allowance for green silk ties
loosened about the neck;
That she is to be an oracle of the autumnal gods
and that the small of her back
is forbidden to touch.

The veil of her shadow blends seamless
in the obscurity
of the crescent moon.
It draws me into a labyrinth of masked fiction
and binds me to her love.